Feminist Advice Friday: I wasn't there for my grieving friend. Now she's mad.
How can I convince her that I care?
A reader asks…
My friend’s mother died. She was kind of like a community mother to all of us...just a jarring loss. I felt paralyzed by the loss, and still do. Wanting to show my support for my friend and her family brought up this major wave of anxiety around saying the wrong thing...or at the wrong time. I had a story that finally felt like the “right” thing to share…something her mom had shared with me a few years back. I wanted to share AND I wanted to be sure to keep my friend centered. Everyone kept posting things about how she was like a mom to all of us and...YES BUT IT WAS HER MOTHER. I didn't want to intrude or overstep. I had an email in draft while I kept close watch on all her posts and stories...but I hadn't pressed send. A couple weeks had passed, when she texted ME and said that she was deeply hurt that she hadn’t heard from me, and that at this point, there was no need to call or respond.
Needless to say I cried, had a panic attack, and responded immediately with an apology. Not to excuse myself, more trying to provide context. I sent the email that had been in draft. She hasn't responded.
I get it. She felt abandoned in her grief. Regardless of my intent, that was the impact. It just hurts like hell that she was so quick to decide my response time somehow meant I didn’t care or that she doesn't matter to me. It feels punitive… like our decades-long friendship is over because I was being careful trying NOT to eff up…yet somehow caused the same hurt I was trying to avoid. sigh.
Do I just go away? Is it even possible to prove you care to someone who has decided you don't? TBH, I'm also kinda shocked because I guess I didn't see myself as "important enough"...like she had the support from “the people who mattered" ...I guess I didn't realize she valued me/us like that. It just feels like I’m holding all these random pieces of sadness, turning them over, trying to see what —if anything—is fixable.
My Answer
The fact that you understand that others may be centering themselves—their loss of a mother figure—in your friend’s loss tells me how deeply empathetic you are. This is something a lot of folks miss when there is a collective loss. They fail to identify and support the person at the center of the loss.
It’s clear you are a good and thoughtful person who cares about your friend. Most people run away from grieving people. Most people, when they fuck this kind of thing up, give up.
I’m proud of you for not giving up. As someone who has grieved deeply, I can tell you that being the friend who is imperfect but who keeps trying really does matter. And your friend may be testing to see if that’s who you are.
I don’t want you to feel bad. I worry about your statement that you were crying and having panic attacks. I’m sorry for those experiences. But also, these sorts of intense emotions and intense guilt can make it very difficult to focus on the grieving person. I encourage you to focus on her emotions. Spiraling into guilt will not help here.
So I say this as gently as possible:
You are making her loss about you.
Your friend is the victim here. Not you.
I need you to understand this. Because this insight is the only way forward.
People need to hear from the people who love them after someone dies. In most cases, they need to hear from them as soon as possible. It is not your fault that you didn’t know this. Our society does a terrible job teaching people how to support bereaved folks.
It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault, though, because the harm to her is the same.
Your impulse is to defend yourself. I understand why. You’re a good person and you had good intentions. You want to be perceived as the good person you are. We all have those feelings.
This is not the time for them.
Your friend is not concerned with whether you are a good person. She is concerned with the fact that, from her perspective, you abandoned her when she was in pain. By not reaching out, again in her mind, you denigrated the life of her mother. You conveyed that this life had no value to you.
I am saying this not to guilt you. I know from our private messages that you are prone to guilt and anxiety, so I want to emphasize again: You are a good person.
Good people do bad things sometimes, and this is one of those times. So, there are two things that need to happen here. We need to help you come up with a plan to respond better next time someone dies, and we need to see if there’s a way you can fix this.
I don’t know what you said to your friend in your follow-up email. Whatever it was, though, give her a bit of time. In a month or so, I want you to email her and convey the following:
I am sorry I did not reach out. It was wrong. Do not make excuses.
Tell her this was not because you do not care, but because you didn’t know what to say.
Apologize again.
Offer something specific you would like to do to help.
Tell her how much her mother meant to you. Share a story.
Tell her you are here for her when she needs you.
And that is it. Do not put her in a situation where she feels like she has to tend to your feelings. Do not demand emotional labor. Do not guilt her about ending the friendship. Not reaching out after someone’s mother dies is absolutely a reason to end a friendship. This is a severe and significant breach of love and trust. If you take nothing else from this post, I hope it will be that. You need to know, everyone needs to know, that not showing up for grieving people is not acceptable. And if you do that, you should expect that they will end the relationship.
She is not throwing away the friendship. In her mind, you threw away the friendship.
It doesn’t matter why you did what you did. Some breaches are so significant that it doesn’t matter if there’s a reason. That’s because at a time of crisis, the people at the center need their own emotions centered. Your emotions made it impossible for you to do that. This happens. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But you cannot expect that your friend will be ok with it. There may never be another time when she needs you quite so intensely, and she has seen that she cannot count on you to make this about her emotions instead of yours.
She may forgive you in time, if you can show that you will make this about her feelings going forward. Maybe she won’t. Either way, I believe that when we know better we can do better, and that painful experiences like the loss of a friendship can teach us how to do better. I hope you will accept the lesson your friend has offered you, however painful it may be.
Sometimes we are the bad guy.
Recognizing this allows us to not be the bad guy again.
So reach out, then wait. And learn.
Last week, I wrote a whole piece about supporting people with grief. It might help you to read it so that when there’s a next time, you can handle things in a way that works out better for everyone. Some simple rules include:
Make it about them. Not you. Not your analysis paralysis. Not your anxiety. The grieving person is the one who is suffering.
Reach out early. And then continue reaching out.
You don’t have to say the right words. There are no magical words that will fix things. Just say something.
Grieving people are often abandoned by their friends. Don’t assume the person is surrounded with love and support. They almost never are.
You will encounter grief many more times in your life. This is your chance to reflect on it, and do better next time.
To the OP - a friend's wife was dying in the hospital. He said if anyone wanted to come say anything now was the time. I felt that I didn't have a right to be there. I was not super duper close with the friend or the wife. In hindsight, I realized that while *I* would have wanted to be left alone with my loved one and would have viewed it as an intrusion if others showed up that this was not how my friend worked. He wanted people around him during this time. It meant a lot to him. I always regret that. We do our best, sometimes it's still not the right thing. I hope it works out for you.